Pond Bass
Fishing Lures

The best
pond bass fishing lures are weedless fishing lures like frog lures, top water
poppers, soft plastic lures and balsa minnow lures mixed with a good bit of
stealth.

Bass in country
ponds and mini lakes have a different forage base than the big city bass in
large reservoirs. The city bass are accustomed to gorging on open-water
baitfish like Threadfin and Gizzard Shad and Golden Shiners, their primary foods
of choice. Country bass dine on a more varied offering of forage that lives in,
around and under the pond’s shoreline grass, laydowns and overhead cover.

Keeping
this in mind, it’s not a bad idea, though not a necessity, to reduce the size
of lures you use. Choice of lure can be more perplexing when preparing to fish
a pond or mini-lake than when fishing a large reservoir.

It can be also
be argued that the selection of pond bass fishing lures is more important than
when fishing bigger bodies of water. Why? Country bass are more aware of the
“normalcy” of their environment. Anything “out of the ordinary” often serves to
spook them. So select
your lures to reflect the forage to which the pond or mini-lake bass normally
encounter.

Try your best to be quiet and inconspicuous. Stealth is a real consideration when fishing small waters, especially when the water is clear. They can see you and if there is regularly little activity around the shoreline your presence will frighten bass to cover or away from shore.

Conversely, bass in working farm ponds,
where cattle and farmers often interact around the water’s edge, tend to be not be so
skittish. It’s what they're used to.

Good Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Topwater Lures:

Topwater lures
are a very good choice for pond fishing. Depending on the depth of the pond or
mini-lake, say it’s no more than 10-15 feet; the most productive lures may be
topwater poppers or shallow to medium diving minnow baits. The latter are
especially good if they suspend.

Rebel Pop-R – A classic lure which has long held its’
appeal for bass and bass fishermen. After casting next to or over cover let it
sit till the water rings vanish then start a fairly rapid retrieve giving it
life with fairly rapid pops. You want it to glob, spit, blub and bloop across
the water’s surface.

Arbogast Jitterbug – A lure known as a nighttime fishing lure
but effective in daylight as well. These are effective when cast parallel to
grass lines or retrieved over a shallow stump field. Retrieve with a slow,
steady reel. You’ll notice its very nice action. If you reel it close to
submerged or protruding stumps or other stick-ups give it a brief pause or two.

Once you get a strike
and your lure goes under remember to pause and feel the bass before sweeping
your rod upward your rod setting the hooks.

Floating Minnows – One of my favorite topwater/subsurface
lures is the old but reliable balsa wood AC Shiner. Another historical and consistent
producer with the same performance features is the tried and true Rapala
Original Floating Minnow, also a balsa wood lure.

Cast one of these
along cover, or over flats populated with brush or stumps. Leave them still until the rings subside,
then lightly twitch it moving it just barely forward. You can move it forward
very slowly or rapidly. No strikes? Then start a steady retrieve which will
cause it to slide below the surface. On the retrieve, should it come by a
stump, surface brush or even a large rock or rocks, stop it and let it float to
the surface. Give it a couple of twitches and restart your retrieve.

These light lures are
best fished on spinning gear.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Minnow Lures:

Other
minnow lures that are good pond bass fishing lures (made of plastic) are minnow
lures that run shallow and suspend, rather than floating back to the surface,
after the retrieve is stopped. This feature is often the trigger for a bass to
strike where one that floats upward or downward on the pause causes a bass to
turn away.

Because
these are heavier than balsa versions they can be cast further and are suitable
for both spinning and baitcast reels.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Frog Lures:

The
shoreline habitat of ponds and mini-lakes is a magnet for frogs. Additionally,
if the small water body has grass like milfoil or hydrilla or a population of
hyacinths there will surely be frogs living there.

There are
several different types of frog lures. For ponds the hollow body type is
considered to be the best choice because they’re weedless by design and many
ponds have shorelines populated with reeds, bulrushes, grass and brush cover. This
is where the big bass hang out because most ponds are devoid of cover away from
the shore.

Keep your
frog lure in water of at least a foot but no more than eight feet deep. Hop it
across the surface; jerk, pause, jerk, jerk, pause. Though the hook up ratio
with these type frogs is lower than with other type lures the blow up of a bass
on a frog is exhilarating in itself. When it happens do this:

Drop your rod tip to about 45
degrees to create some slack.

Wait until you actually “feel” the
bass.

Then jerk his teeth out with an
upward hook set

Fish on!

Frog gear normally
calls for a long medium-heavy rod with a fast tip and a fast gear ratio reel
spooled with 20-30 lb. monofilament or braid. Personally, when pond fishing I
use 10-12 lb. monofilament in order to have flexibility to use the tackle setup
with other type lures.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Soft Jerkbaits:

A lure that could arguably be described as the epitome of
pond bass fishing lures. When rigged weightless and retrieved with a
combination of single and multiple quick jerks mixed with occasional pauses, it
will coax bass from cover. Even from long distances. You will often get strikes
on the pause when the jerkbait slowly drops downward.

You can’t beat a Zoom fluke most of the time but a ZMan Jerk
ShadZ is a particularly buoyant, five inch fluke type lure and, unlike the Zoom
fluke, will not sink, period. While this can be aggravating at times, when
rigged on a 4-0 or 5-0 wide gap hook with a small bit of weight added it’s
great for working along the water’s surface or right-smack in cover like shoreline
bushes and grass. When stopped, it will slide quietly downward ever so slowly.
If a bass is around it’s a good bet it’s going to get slammed.

Use a rod that’s medium action with a soft tip for your
soft jerkbaits and be constantly aware of your retrieve speed. Keep your rod
tip pointed toward the water if using a straight, steady retrieve. Should you
see bass following but not striking adjust speed up or down till you get a
strike. They’ll let you know what they want. Sometimes the most strikes will
take place when the lure is paused for a second or two.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Crawfish Lures:

Another creature drawn to shoreline cover in ponds and
mini-lakes is the crawfish. These crustaceans just happen to be high on the
menu of bass. What lucky fact for us bass fishermen.

There are many plastic replica crawfish lures and others
that, while not exact recreations, offer up the silhouette that grab the
attention of bass. Try and determine the color of the craws (they can change
color with the seasons or just be several different species in that pond) in
the pond or mini-lake you‘re fishing and use the closest color plastic craw you
have.

I used to
think the plastic versions had to be the most realistic available. Then I read about
how bass evaluate a lure before striking. Seems they don’t do so according to
the actual naturalness of a shape but rather as to how well a shape fits into
the instinctual predisposition of what their prey should look like. In a study
evaluating the strike response to crawfish shapes the one without any
appendages was struck almost twice as much as any other that had appendages.

With that in
mind I use a broad range of crawfish imitators. Some favorites:

YUM Crawbug

YUM Craw Papi

YUM Money Craw

Berkley Power Craw

Yamamoto Fat Baby Craw

Netbait Paca Craw

ZMan Crawdadz

They all
work. Stick to those that are three inches or less in size.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Plastic Lizards and Worms:

I use plastic lizards
year round here in the South and they’re one of the best pond bass fishing
lures. Bass everywhere love to hate them. They can be fished many different
ways, Carolina Rig, Texas Rig, Split Shot Rig or weightless.

In ponds and
mini-lakes I tend to use lizards that are 4” to 5” inches. Cast them up against
or into shoreline cover (make sure it’s skin hooked) and hold on. Retrieve it
slowly straight back or lift-and-drop back to the boat or shore.

As for worms, you can
never go wrong with them. They and lizards are basically fished the same ways.
On any given day one might out catch the other. Just keeping trying till you
find the one they want.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Jig Pig:

If you’re into jigs
choose small to medium sizes in blue/black or brown/orange combinations. There are
numerous trailers to add for bulk and action.

Football jigs are
good if the bottom has rocks or if there is a dam with rip rap. Target any
brush or stumps with football jigs as well. For shoreline covers go with a jig designed to
move easily through grass and brush.

Pond Bass Fishing Lures

Spinnerbaits:

Small spinnerbaits that are small in size (1/8 – 1/4
ounce) can be effective in small waters. Work them slowly through stump fields
and around any “planted/sunken” cover like sunken Christmas trees or commercial
“trees”. If there is grass retrieve them over the top of the beds. Retrieve these
slowly and steadily. A pump and drop retrieve invites hang-ups in shallow
water.

Though considered antiques by many bass fishermen an
inline spinner can be very effective in small waters when retrieved parallel to
shore or through stump fields. A #2 or #3 inline spinner from Mepps or a 1/8 or
1/16 ounce Rooster Tail from Worden’s can be surprisingly productive.

Tackle and Gear

Keep your pond bass fishing gear to a manageable level as
you may be faced with a walk to the water and then must walk around the water
body if you’re not in a johnboat, canoe or kayak.

I limit the number of rods to three and these are all spinning
rod/reel set ups. This gives me the flexibility of casting underhand or
side-armed in order to get under shoreline cover.

What you ultimately choose as your pond bass fishing
lures and corresponding rod/reel combinations is really a matter of personal
preference. Whatever you decide upon you can have fun filled days on small
waters like ponds and mini-lakes.